Film Hick: T2: Trainspotting

After Ghost In The Shell, I will admit that I was a little bit nervous about watching T2 Trainspotting, but for me it worked really well. I have the feeling that some people may react to it the same way that they reacted to the fact that Carrie Fisher had aged, but frankly, on both counts, they can go and fuck themselves.

When you are revisiting something after any kind of interval you need to bear that in mind – rather they show you something that shows some kind of recognition of the passage of time than trying to pretend we are checking in with the same characters and nothing has changed. Twin Peaks wouldn’t have worked if it had ignored the fact that time had passed and that the current lay of the land wanted something a little different.

Each of the characters seemed to be at exactly where you might imagine them to be. I stupidly haven\’t read any of the sequels or prequels yet, but this made me want to. Welsh was back in his same cameo role again, so he must have signed off on this.

I have to say, the story I loved most was Spud’s. Begbie’s was pretty predictable – he definitely pushed the button on the whole idea of a repeating cycle of violence. It was funny, I forgot the original sum of money was 4000 GBP, and for a second I thought wow, that’s not much; then I re-thought how much difference that would make in most working class people’s lives, but Renton and Sick Boy’s falling out over it seems in some ways more that Sick Boy didn’t think of it first, not that the broken trust’s impact doesn’t play some role in it. Look out for the call back to the scene where they all went out into the country in the original movie.

I kind of luckily avoided too much commentary about this movie – for me, as a 40-something prone to looking back on my life, and having gone back home after being away for a while, and threatened with that prospect again, it really worked. It was never going to be as iconic as the first film, and I think it recognised that, which is a good thing; it does what it needed to do.